It All Began From The ‘Mystery Of Colored Glasses': Chemistry Nobel Prize 2023 Explained
Alexei Ekimov, Louis Brus and Moungi Bawendi have been awarded Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2023 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, “for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots”. The 2023 Nobel Laureates in Chemistry have been exploring the wonders in the nanoworld for decades. ‘In the early 1980s, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov succeeded in creating– independently of each other – quantum dots. In 1993, Moungi Bawendi revolutionized the methods for manufacturing quantum dots, making their quality extremely high – a vital prerequisite for their use in today’s nanotechnology’ says the popular science background report, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
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How Quantum dots colour the world..
The quantum world, where the size scales down to millionths of a millimetre, the behaviour of matter is beyond the scope of theories that governs the macroworld. For years there were just theories that predicted the possibilities of quantum effects. However in 1970s researchers synthesised nano structures in laboratory. Researchers were after the phenomenon that give mesmerizing colours to glass and it was inferred that ‘the colours came from particles forming inside the glass and that the colour depended on the particles’ size’. That was when ‘Alexei Ekimov, a recent doctoral graduate’ started his investigations on coloured glasses. His efforts led to deliberate synthesis of quantum dots for the first time. ‘In 1981, Ekimov published his discovery in a Soviet scientific journal, but this was difficult for researchers on the other side of the Iron Curtain to access. Therefore, this year’s next Nobel Prize Laureate in Chemistry – Louis Brus – was unaware of Alexei Ekimov’s discovery when, in 1983, he was the first researcher in the world to discover size-dependent quantum effects in particles floating freely in a solution’, as detailed out in the popular science background report, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. If you could visualise how size of football is to the size of Earth, similar are quantum dots beyond the nanoworld. They are composed of few hundreds or thousands of atoms. The size dependent quantum effects added a new dimension of ‘size’ to the properties of elements listed in the popular periodic table. The major breakthrough in synthesis of quantum dots came in 1993, when the research group, in which Bawendi was a post doctoral fellow happened to produce these ‘tiny crystal embryos’- the Quantum dots. The colour of light emitted by these nanostructures ( wavelength of emission) could be tuned by the size of the crystal.
This possibility of tuning the emission of quantum dots in a wide range ‘are utilised in computer and television screens based on QLED technology, where the Q stands for quantum dot’. These structures has immense scope in biochemistry and medicine to map cells and organs. ‘Doctors have begun investigating the potential use of quantum dots to track tumour tissue in the body. Chemists instead use the catalytic properties of quantum dots to drive chemical reactions’.
Quantum dots as a potential candidate, in terms of application in many relevant fields has just started its journey. They are promising structures for ‘flexible electronics, miniscule sensors, slimmer solar cells and perhaps encrypted quantum communication’. And the scientific community , even now sees just explored the tip of a magnificent iceberg when it comes to the nanoworld. The journey continues…
Source: https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/10/popular-chemistryprize2023.pdf
